Industries having cleanrooms have long been struggling to find a way to properly clean the walls and other surfaces of cleanrooms. Cleanrooms are used in many industries and in many environments including surgical suites in hospitals and clinics, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing facilities, genetic engineering laboratories as well as the manufacture of micro-electronics. Problems associated with cleanroom environments concern cleaning up spills of a variety of fluids, both industrial and bodily, decontaminating the room with respect to micro-organisms, and removing lint and other particles from the cleanroom environment. The problems of cleaning these rooms have not been easily solved.
Typical solutions to the problems associated with cleaning cleanrooms have included using cloth wipes, tacky rollers, sponge and string mops. However, none of these systems presented a satisfactory cleaning system to meet all the needs of cleaning a cleanroom without creating additional problems, such as new forms of contamination either in the form of material particles or in the form of fabric dissolved in the cleaning or sanitizing solvents. For example, using cloth wipes is a very slow process done by hand. Because using cloth wipes is done by hand, it is often difficult to reach high areas. In order to reach the high or out of the way places, the person cleaning must be constantly moving a ladder. This makes the whole process labor intensive and time consuming.
The use of tacky rollers are inadequate because they are not as thorough as a wet applicator. Tacky rollers can only remove some particles and do not remove stains. Additionally, tacky rollers are not capable of distributing a disinfectant or sterilizing agent that is often a necessary cleaning step in hospital and clinic environments.
Sponge mops are not satisfactory because the usual foam sponge heads used have poor abrasion resistance during the wiping and wringing process. Consequently, while the sponge is being used, the sponge will often degrade and actually create undesirable fibers or particles that contaminate the environment. In addition most sponge mop systems have some sort of wringing attachment at the head of the mop. A wringing system on the end of the mop makes the entire system top heavy when an operator is working over head and leads to operator fatigue from lifting it up to clean ceilings or the walls in high places. An additional problem with using a sponge mop is that the mop head is not moveable in relation to the mop handle. The lack of mobility of the mop head with respect to the handle makes it difficult to clean in hard to reach areas such as corners and behind equipment or other wall obstructions.
Similarly, string mops are not satisfactory because the heads of these systems are not compatible with cleanroom environments. String mop heads are typically made from cotton and rayon which generate an extremely high amount of fibers and particles during use. This kind of contamination is unacceptable in cleanroom environments. Furthermore, various components in these systems are not autoclavable.